View Full Version : NYC central park soon to be overflowing with artsy fucks!


twice
01-23-2003, 07:19 PM
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Artistic duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude have finally won permission to snake a fluttering orange sculpture through 23 miles of New York's Central Park, ending a decades-old debate, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Wednesday.

The exhibit -- "The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005" -- will be erected in February 2005 and stand for two weeks.


Christo is famous for his giant temporary works of art, such as wrapping the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art in a tarpaulin and wrapping Berlin's Reichstag in 1 million square feet of polypropylene fabric.


The Central Park work by the husband-and-wife team will consist of 7,500 16-foot-high gates draped with saffron-colored fabric parading along about 23 miles of public paths in the park.



The mayor predicted the project will attract half a million out-of-town visitors and generate $72 million to $136 million in economic activity.


First conceived in the late 1970s, the project ran into environmental objections. Among them were the thousands of post holes to be dug in the park to secure the tall upright structures.


In this version of the installation, recyclable vinyl poles will be secured by narrow steel base weights on the paved surfaces of the park's walkways, with no holes in the ground.


Pedestrians will be able to pass under and through the work, drawn as sort of a whimsical tunnel without sides, with cloth draped from cross beams shivering in the wind.


The artists say they will pay for the project themselves and pay $3 million to use the city park.



The installation is expected to employ thousands of New York City residents temporarily, he said.


"We'll provide so much employment that soon you will hear 'let them eat gates,'" said Jeanne-Claude, in joking reference to an earlier suggestion that the project was elitist and reminiscent of the quip that cost Marie Antoinette her head.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=573&ncid=757&e=4&u=/nm/20030123/od_nm/christo_dc

KingJeremy
01-23-2003, 07:24 PM
That sounds a bit bizarre. :erm

The Last Laugh
01-23-2003, 07:25 PM
keep an eye peeled for frail and bedazzled. now that is one artsy fuck.

DeadSwan
01-24-2003, 02:22 PM
i AM frail and bedazzled.

geesh.

anyway. i <3 christo and jean-claude. this is gonna be sweet.

jczeroman
01-24-2003, 03:00 PM
This kind of stuff makes me throw up. Wrapping stuff up in fabric is "art"? Give me a break.

in other news>> I just took a sip of water, and flocks of art scholars are now banging on my door wanting to know how in the hell i created such a masterpeice.

The Last Laugh
01-24-2003, 03:30 PM
Originally posted by DeadSwan
i AM frail and bedazzled.

geesh.

anyway. i <3 christo and jean-claude. this is gonna be sweet.

first, i think that should have said 'I am frail and bedazzled'

and your going... so that means i'm funny

DeadSwan
01-24-2003, 04:07 PM
Originally posted by jczeroman
This kind of stuff makes me throw up. Wrapping stuff up in fabric is "art"? Give me a break.

in other news>> I just took a sip of water, and flocks of art scholars are now banging on my door wanting to know how in the hell i created such a masterpeice.


idiot :noway:

http://www.coh.arizona.edu/german/christo.jpg http://facstaff.uww.edu/allsenjm/WOTA/IMAGES/Christo.jpg http://www.utexas.edu/coc/rtf/318b/Artists_Projects/CHRISTO.JPG

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were both born on June 13, 1935, he in Bulgaria, she in Morocco. They met in Paris in 1958 when Christo was commissioned to paint a portrait of Jeanne-Claude's mother. Since that time they have collaborated on an impressive oeuvre of artistic work. The wrapping of the Reichstag in the summer of 1995 once again placed the Christos in the spotlight of the international art world, a center stage position they have held several times before: in 1991 during the installation of The Umbrellas, Japan-U.S.A., 1984-91; in 1985, with The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975-1985; in 1976, with the installation of the Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76; and so on back to their first collaborations in 1961 on the docks of the Cologne harbor.



Yet it would be incorrect to associate Christo and Jeanne-Claude only with these particular "high points." The previously mentioned installations took years of planning. The considerable activity which precede the installation of a piece is as much a part of a particular work as the actual installation. It took twenty-four years before the Reichstag could be wrapped, seven years to organize The Umbrellas, ten years to plan The Pont Neuf Wrapped, and three years for the Surrounded Islands in Biscayne Bay. Numerous books and videos have documented the remarkable succession of zoning board hearings, public forums, parliamentary debates, public and private meetings, legal releases and contract negotiations, press conferences, materials' tests, drawings, collages, exhibitions, as well as the enormous effort and teamwork required for the actual installations.


This is why each particular progression of activities is correctly referred to as a "project" and the dates for each piece start with the inception of the project idea and end with the de-installation of the piece. Currently the Christos are engaged in two projects: The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York City (1979-in progress); and Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, Colorado (1992-in progress).

Individual aspects of the Christos' art may be linked to any number of artistic precursors, yet in its totality their work is truly unique. Their oeuvre has been approached critically via its resonance with Constructivism, Nouveau R~{((~}alisme, happenings, conceptual art, land art, and the tradition of draped figures in art, especially those of Giotto and Rodin. Yet any single point of entry must be left behind if one is to fully appreciate the Christos' unparalleled achievements.




Of the many perspectives from which one can investigate the Christos' art it is the use of fabric as an agent for transformation and revelation that is perhaps most crucial. The wrapping or surrounding of familiar objects, the curtaining off of familiar views, the intervention of fabric where one least expects it undermines our comfortable residence with the accustomed and creates a sense of dislocation. This substitution of a more ambivalent than unfamiliar presence for the predictable is one of the key elements of their work. Yet the wrapping, draping, surrounding, or veiling action of the fabric does not dissolve the known. Rather it recontextualizes it within a variety of corresponding associations. As the curtain surges in the wind, as the wrapping billows over a form, the fabric's fluttering surface serves as a mediator between our preexisting conceptions concerning a particular condition and inferences of shifting states.

Visually, the wrapping of an object reveals its essential forms as they swell beneath the fabric. Volumes and shapes lost when seen with their usually coexistant forest of details become paramount when sheathed, as in The Pont Neuf Wrapped.




Existing cultural contextualizations associated with an object and its milieu may serve as springboards for revisional analysis when that object is veiled. The wrapping of the Reichstag raised several political and historical issues, including the failed earlier attempts at a parliamentary system of government by a unified German people. With the dismantling of the wall and the reunification of Germany, the Wrapped Reichstag serves as a sort of tabula rasa against which many questions may be posed, not just by the German people or the European community, but indeed by the entire world.

The final realization of a project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude is not the installation of a particular piece. A project is not completed until the installation is removed and the site is returned to its "normal" state. Yet that formerly inviolate condition has been forever altered by the installation and the lingering resonance it leaves behind. While the fabrics, ropes, cables, poles, and whatever other materials used in an installation will be recycled and the site returned to its pre-installation status, the uncertainties and questions raised by the Christos' efforts remain, dispersed among all those who have been engaged by the project. This process of reevaluation continues long after the project is supposedly completed. This creation of permanent states of reconsideration, instigated by work which is temporary by design, is perhaps the Christos' greatest achievement.

jczeroman
01-24-2003, 04:21 PM
Originally posted by DeadSwan



idiot


I'm not saying that it isn't interesting, but is it art? I doubt it. But i guess art continues to be one of those "undefinable" things so arguing about it is generaly pointless.

DeadSwan
01-24-2003, 04:31 PM
Originally posted by jczeroman


I'm not saying that it isn't interesting, but is it art? I doubt it. But i guess art continues to be one of those "undefinable" things so arguing about it is generaly pointless.



it's art.

twice
01-24-2003, 06:39 PM
i knew you'd appreciate it, meghan.